Hello bookworms! I hope you are doing well. Today I bring you a new Historical Fiction book: Lying with Lions by Annabel Fielding. Below you will find information about the book, my quick take as well as an excerpt kindly provided by the author. Learn more about Annabel herself at the end of the post. 🙂
Synopsis:
Edwardian England. Agnes Ashford knows that her duty is threefold: she needs to work on cataloguing the archive of the titled Bryant family, she needs to keep the wounds of her past tightly under wraps, and she needs to be quietly grateful to her employers for taking her up in her hour of need. However, a dark secret she uncovers due to her work thrusts her into the Bryants’ brilliant orbit – and into the clutch of their ambitions.
They are prepared to take the new century head-on and fight for their preeminent position and political survival tooth and nail – and not just to the first blood. With a mix of loyalty, competence, and well-judged silence Agnes rises to the position of a right-hand woman to the family matriarch – the cunning and glamorous Lady Helen. But Lady Helen’s plans to hold on to power through her son are as bold as they are cynical, and one day Agnes is going to face an impossible choice…
Content Notes include infidelity.
My Quick Thoughts
I haven’t read a lot of Historical Fiction focused outside of war so this was a refreshing perspective. The writing is overall engaging but I felt the pace of time and the plot could have been more refined. Agnes’ attraction to Helen is obvious from the start and develops well. Portraying a lesbian relationship in that era between women at least a decade apart added another refreshing element with the mix of aristocracy falling for the working class.
Excerpt from Lying with Lions
‘‘But their beauty…’ Agnes tries to drag herself back to the discussion, one that was so patently designed to distract her. She recalls the Sistine frescoes in detail: every inch of the walls and ceiling painted over, writhing figures squeezed into every corner. Not a square, wherever one’s gaze turns, allowed to remained without a vision of flesh, of foliage, of drapery. ‘Their beauty has some dose of cruelty in it too, I think. In intent, if not in execution. They were clearly designed to pierce, to overwhelm…’
‘Of course they were. The Catholic Church had plenty of time to polish that particular art. They have the right of it there, I suspect. You know, when I was Meredith’s age, I had some notions of converting to Catholicism. I might have even done so, if I wasn’t married out of the schoolroom’.
‘Why?’
‘The golden mosaics, the angels singing in stucco, the suffering virgins on the frescoes… It’s beautiful, for one thing. It’s sublime. It inspires veneration in one. Awe before majesty’.
‘Do you like that?’ Agnes recalls the homely white walls of the church she herself always went to on Sunday in the life she remembers, her father alive and well by her side (was he truly well then, though? Or is it just her memory that washes every moment before the fall in a rainbow light?).
‘I think, any love worth the name, divine or human, has in it at least a small share of veneration’. Helen’s right hand releases hers, and instead trails upwards, gliding, ghost-like, over Agnes’ chest and up her throat before finally touching her chin. Helen tips her chin a little upwards, as if to make up for the differences in their heights. Her long ivorine fingers trace along her jawline. Agnes’ breath is still, suspended. She is floating in time.
Finally, Helen cups her chin firmly in one hand, and skirts a thumb over Agnes’s lower lip. Agnes makes no sound outside a sudden indrawn breath, but opens her mouth, warm and willing. Helen chuckles rather than smiles, and repeats the motion, this time holding her thumb there for longer, as if securing the place. Then, she leans forth across the table, at the same time pulling Agnes, unresisting, closer, and kisses her, heated, on the mouth.
About Annabel Fielding
From her website:
I am a self-professed geek who lives in Berlin, and is dedicated a little too much to reading historical non-fiction; I pick out the juiciest bits from it and bring them to you.
My special areas of interest are Edwardian age and Late Middle Agnes/Renaissance, but sometimes I veer into other directions, too, when distracted by a shiny thing.
Connect with her on Goodreads, Twitter and Instagram.
Many thanks to the author and NetGalley for a complimentary digital copy of this book for an honest review.
Cover Photo by Aditya Vyas on Unsplash
Sounds really good!